Silent Hill creator teases new horror game project

In December, veteran game designer Keiichiro Toyama announced he had left Sony Interactive’s since-shuttered Japan Studio, where he’d worked for more than 20 years, creating game series like Siren and Gravity Rush. Before that, however, Toyama was famous for creating Silent Hill at Konami.

Toyama has since struck out on his own, forming a new company called Bokeh Game Studio with game director Junya Okura and producer Kazunobu Sato, both of whom worked on the Siren series. The people behind Bokeh have begun teasing their next project, which Toyama describes as a different type of horror game. Bokeh has also released tantalizing concept art for its unannounced project, including one piece shown earlier this week on the studio’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Image: Bokeh Game Studio

In a video released in February, Toyama said he’d been drawn back to horror — the genre he explored in Silent Hill and three Siren games — but wanted to examine it through the lens of “everyday life being shaken.” Toyama also cited the works of film directors Wong Kar-Wai and Fruit Chan as inspiration for his next game.

“I want the player to feel exhilarated,” Toyama said, explaining that he wanted to present horror with “an entertainment note.”

“Rather than showing scary things, it should question our position,” he said, “make us challenge the fact that we’re living peacefully.” The concept he was interested in exploring, he explained, was “regular people driven into irrational situations,” where “they’re on the edge emotionally while dealing with action or drama.”

Bokeh Game Studio plans to release its debut game on a variety of platforms, possibly as early as 2023. If you want to learn more, and see more potential concept art from the project (that is, if you’re comfortable with the type of imagery seen below), check out this Bokeh-produced interview with Toyama on YouTube.